The Court of the Gospel

“The court is in session!” Yells the judge as he pounds his gavel, “Christianity may call their first witness”. A chill of anticipation fills the room.

“Christianity calls to the stand the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.”

Objection! Hearsay!

The unequivocal foundations of Christianity are the gospels, telling of the life and teaching of Jesus Christ. As a foundation, however, they do extremely poorly. First and foremost, not one of the gospels was written during the days of the son of God. Moreover, the writers never knew their lord savior. Not one. Even Josephus, a Roman historian of the time, had written of the events long after they occurred. We would never accept such evidence in court, how could we accept it as the basis for our lives?

Just for fun though, let us put them on the stand anyway. The gospels are the basis for Christianity and we want to hear their story. “I’m sorry” we hear from the prosecution “We cannot provide the original testimony of those who wrote about Jesus decades after his death. But we do have copies.

Not only are the gospels inadmissible for being hearsay, there is no guarantee they are the original testimony of those who wrote them. In fact much of the text was edited over and over for hundreds of years. Parts were added, parts were removed. The story of the Resurrection, for example, was added to the gospel of Mark hundreds of years after it was written.

But let’s be fair. We want to hear what these people have to say, despite having long lost any credibility. And as they tell their stories we notice a contradiction. Not one, but thousands of contradictions. And these are not slight discrepancies either. From the heredity of Jesus, through miracles performed to the virgin birth itself - contradictions are bountiful. Even if one were inclined to believe in a heavenly watchful eye, making sure the gospels remained true, we still must face these contradictions. If it contradicts itself, it cannot be absolutely true. can it?

I’m sure we can find other supernatural claims with much better evidence than this. Throw a stone in the crazy pond and you will hit a man claiming he was abducted by aliens. We dismiss the man off hand, but this is first hand testimony. Far better than that of the gospel. And he is not alone. The abducted are many, with often corroborating testimonies. But still crazy.

The religion of Christianity is predicated on the gospels. Stories written long after what they are depicting. Surprisingly contradictory considering the amount of editing each had to go through for hundreds of years after they were written. And so:

“The gospels are inadmissible.” says the judge reluctantly. Turning to Christianity he asks “Do you have anything else that is not based on these testimonies?” silence. “Anything?”